Zim: A failed, fragile state? Part 3

FELLOW countrymen and women, lovers and haters of Madzimbahwe, I hope this one finds you well. As the rest of Africa bids farewell to the revolutionary month of May and its commemorative undertones to African unity, Madzimbabwe is entering yet another commemorative episode of recollecting the success of the country’s anticolonial project which is fairly synonymous with that of the entire continent.

According to the Roman calendar (which presently defines time and space of our being), we are in the month of June.

In the local body of enduring episteme of this country we are in the month of the First Chimurenga/Umvukela of 1896-7.

That sacred month of our national memory which was known was and is still known among the Shona as “Chikumi” and “Nhlangula” among the Ndebele. This is a month of remembering our enduring values of inkululeko/rusununguko/kuzvitonga kuzere/uzibuse. This month of remembrance is a parabolic reprint of the past which reflects sincere journey of colonial resistance as well articulated in the revolutionary musical rendition of Mbira Dzenharira: Nyika yedu yakauya neChimurenga. Chokwadi mwanawevhu anga azvipira. Kusunugura hutongi hwekudzvinyirirwa Pakatanga yemapfumo kuchizouya magidi. (Our country came Chimurenga. Surely the child of the soil had committed himself to break the chains of tyrannical rule.

It began with a war fought by spears followed by that of guns). The coming in of the guns and the advent of the nationalist movements of the 50s was an expression of patriotic endurance. This substantiates that patriotism was an ideological element of Zimbabwe’s coming into being.

This patriotism transcended to the social class as one would notice in the second verse of the quoted song by Mbira Dzenharira:

Hona torangarira magamba, ambuya Nehanda, Chaminuka sekuru Kaguvi.

Mhondoro huru dzenyika ino dzakatidzigira kuti tikunde paChimurenga.

Hona ndorangarira vaParirenyatwa. Rekai Tangwena tinomuremekedza.

Hona ndorangarira vaChitepo ndorangarira Tongogara.

Hona Ndorangarira anaMujibha, Hona ndorangarira ana chimbwido.

The remembered nationalist figures include heroes of the first and second Chimurenga. The first set of heroes mentioned in the song (Nehanda, Chaminuka, Kaguvi) are referred to as mhondoro huru dzenyika yino (great divine custodians of this nation).

While the second set of the remembered heroes (Parirenyatwa, Tangwena, Chitepo and Tongogara) includes the socially elevated Africans of that time — who became the “thought power” (Mahomva 2014) of the second armed struggle because of their privileged social class belonging.

Parirenyatwa a medical doctor, Chitepo the first African lawyer to represent trialed African nationalists. Chief Tangwena’s contribution as a traditional leader in the second colonial republic is also given (“special” acknowledgement) (tinomuremekedza).

Tongogara the commander of the Zanla forces is also appraised in the song alongside the ordinary male and female collaborators of the armed struggle. The national project and the projections

of the “self of the nation” This musical allusion aptly explains the extent to which we have long defined our political ideology as a people even before that narrative attracted cosmetic historiography because of . the . . appetites of the Rangers and the Beaches of the long gone era of Rhodesia. Before our armed resistance and its aspirations was christened “nationalism/ national project”; our people had long defined the trajectory of disentangling the coloniality of power embodied in the paradigm of European expansionism.

This invention of redemptive epistemology transcends Ranger’s claim of curating the primitive stage of Zimbabwe’s historiography — as if we were void of oral and acoustic memory before the scramble for the writing of the story of our quest for freedom.

Actually, Africans had long defined their narratives of resistance long before the writeness of the African Her-His-Story and My-Story.

However, it is the writeness of our narratives and its limitations to the European custodianship which has conceived abbreviated expressions of the African experience, identity, being and power; not forgetting that the idea of Africa is in itself an invention and is not the making of our own. This is meticulously articulated in Valentine Mudimbe (1988)’s The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of knowledge.

This is why when we sought to understand nationhood, nationalism and even defining the idea of the nation we are stuck in the European paradigm of Western intellectual manuals of defining nationhood. This is why we think the national project is a failure and can not be defined outside the limited scope of European intellectualism.

The Being of our Time and Space We are defined by oracles of imposed universalism defined in terms of the European experience and its contact with Africa. This is captured in Achille Mbembe’s thesis on the post-colony:

“Africa is never seen as possessing things and attributes properly part of “human nature.” Or, when it is, its things and attributes are generally of lesser value, little importance, and poor quality. It is this elementariness and primitiveness that makes Africa the world par-excellence of all that is incomplete, mutilated, and unfinished, its history reduced to a series of setbacks of nature in its quest for humankind.”

It is against this background, that the ontology of our time and space is measured on the basis of our experience with the colonial matrix of power.

It is as if our existence is an abbreviated expression of Europe’s modernity handouts which brutally manifested through the grotesque processes Western modernity which was sustained by slavery and colonialism.

To this effect, the being of Africa’s time and space is classified in terms of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial phases.

It is as if we are only defined in terms of our contact with colonialism — such that there is no definition of our being other than being a “colonial” race and underdogs of a human hierarchy which is colonial. Rethinking the grammars of

post-colonialism. Post-colonialists and post-colonialism synonymously articulate a cluster of periodic thinking set in intervals of assertions of coloniality and the quest to challenge coloniality.

In the process, post-colonialism attempts to locate its gravitas from contesting the episteme of colonialism and neo-colonialism in particular.

However, when carefully considered, post-coloniality only serves as a conveyerbelt of ‘third-world” protestant rhetoric, but remains in the stereo-types of colonial classifications of the African experience. Homi Bhabha (1987;1994), an ardent postcolonial advocate defines post-colonialism as a process of re-membering narratives of being from an experience of dismemberment which produced the non-existentiality of Africa and Africans.

It is in this regard that, post-colonialism has a deficit which makes it controversial in offering a redemptive paradigm of Africa, particularly in terms of liberating the African mind.

Just like other annotations of Africa’s experience with colonialism, postcolonialism reproduces Africa’s past, present and the present as an ultimate expression of the continent’s contact with coloniality of power.

The limited definition of Africa as precolonial, colonial and post-colonial is the major source of the myths of defining African states as failed or fragile.

Therefore, in concluding this series there is need to genuinely interrogate if Zimbabwe is a failed and fragile state.

Are we failed and fragile state? The Eurocentric stereotypical deconstruction of the assertive intellectual assets of Africa have perpetually made Europe a moral prefect of producing knowledge, power and being of the race.

It is in this regard, that Europe still sweats its hegemonic parameters and energies to dictate events in Africa.

This was particularly epitomised a few weeks back when African masters of statecraft and captains of industry and commerce converged on Durban, South Africa, for the World Economic Forum on Africa convoked by World Economic Forum (WEF), a Swiss non-profit institution.

The World Economic Forum normatively functions within the interest of developing the globe by harnessing intellectual input of political, academic and economic leaders in shaping economic development.

The 2017 edition of this forum was held under the theme, “Achieving Inclusive Growth through Responsive and Responsible Leadership”.

This year’s forum was strongly hinged on influencing leaders to change the way they approach development planning by designing policies that allow everyone to benefit from economic growth. Also pertinent among the issues raised at this superficial colloquium of global development was the issue of “fragile states.”

The proportions of fragility used to classify states are namely violence, justice, institutions, economic foundations and resilience. Zimbabwe, Chad, Somalia, Central African Republic and South Sudan were classified under the cluster “fragile states” in Africa.

Thanks to President Robert Mugabe’s stubborn ideological consistency; he refuted this narrow demonising of Zimbabwe as a “fragile state”.

This is because Zimbabwe is a peaceful country with sound institutions of justice, not to mention the country’s untapped economic potential.

His Excellency challenged the yardsticks of this fragility attributed to African states, particularly Zimbabwe stating that: “We have our literacy rate of over 90 percent and it is the highest in Africa.”

This view does not sideline the fact that Zimbabwe has a rich array of minerals, tourist attractions and viable economic prospects in the agriculture sector; not to mention the country’s human capital which is courtesy of its unchallenged literacy rate as indicated by President Mugabe.

It also goes without saying that Zimbabwe is unequivocally rich country in the world in terms of mineral resources which sustain the West’s mineral processing industry.

At the same time, it is on record that Zimbabwe’s mining sector has been hemorrhaged by illicit financial flows which are clandestinely perpetuated by Western trade deviants in the mining and wildlife sector.

Therefore, it is these untold narratives of the compact foundation of our sovereignty –and its Western induced pitfalls which promote narrow and abbreviated sequences of reason which devalue the greatness of Africa as a whole.

As a result, Zimbabweans need to depart from notions of inferiority which prejudice future generations from liberating narratives.

Continued conformity to borrowed thinking which is not inspired by the enduring values experience as a race will mislead us into believing that our destiny is framed by the Eurocentric paradigm of thinking.

Africa needs more truth other than anecdotal misrepresentations of her identity shaped by Western nefarious and clumsily fractured intentions of thought-aid to Africa.

Mayibuye! MAY I appeal to the powers that be to consider school heads and attend to their concerns in terms of salary and other working conditions? It is true that the success of a school solemnly depends on the head.

The Government is proud of the education system in the country but it is neglecting the champions of the system.

I have never heard of anyone talking about the school heads yet they are grossly underpaid. The ministry keeps on piling work on them and is not concerned with the plight of a school head. It is the responsibility of the minister to spell out the welfare of the school heads to the employer because the employer is in charge of many employees, not to say that there is a ministry for that as he has been quoted.

Heads of schools in neighbouring countries are getting good salaries and a loan to acquire a standard car for use.

On the contrary school heads do not have cars, only a few managed to get cars which are not suitable for rural areas.

Rural school heads travel long distances to provincial offices or Zimsec offices to submit or collect exam papers, at times they lose envelopes with examination scripts in public transport. Is this really not a matter of concern for the ministry?

Some heads have embezzled school funds and they are behind bars because of dealing with large sums of money yet they get peanuts. We have politicians that have embezzled CDF funds but no punishment is given to them. Is it that they are above the law?

These days no one can be appointed to the post of a head without a university degree but nothing is done in return. The school heads have themselves to blame. What are the key responsibilities of Naph/Nash when they leave out their welfare?

Zimta has never talked about school heads, surprisingly those in Zimta leadership are school heads. Security guards in the local authority earn far higher than a school head, those heading BCC schools know that. Is the ministry not ashamed?

The person in charge of the school earning less than the caretaker? My school head exposed his payslip to me and I was very surprised.

As a secretary of the SDC I say this is unfair when we see some people in Government driving Ford Rangers but not working at all.